IDC: Apple Watch loses ground as 'basic' wearables boom
According to the latest estimates from research firm IDC, Apple Watch shipments are plummeting as sales of "basic" smart wearables that do little more than track fitness metrics continue to grow.
For the second quarter of 2016, Apple Watch saw shipments shrink to an estimated 1.6 million units, down 56.7 percent year over year. By contrast, wearables market leader Fitbit shipped 5.7 million units over the same period, up 28.7 percent.
As a result of the dip in shipments, Apple saw its position among top-five wearable device vendors slip from second to third, with its share of the market dropped precipitously from 20.3 percent in 2015 to only 7 percent in 2016. The dip allowed last year's third-place vendor Xiaomi to usurp Apple with a 14 percent share of the market.
Garmin exhibited the highest growth rate and matched Apple's 1.6 million shipments for the second quarter, up 106.7 percent from the same time last year. Newcomer Lifesense placed fifth on one million units shipped.
The overall wearables market grew 26.1 percent during quarter two.
While IDC's figures tell a tale of doom and gloom for Apple, it should be noted that Apple Watch is a smartwatch, while products marketed by producers like Xiaomi are fitness trackers. IDC acknowledges draws the incongruous comparison, noting basic wearables, or those that do not support third party apps, grew 48.8 percent year-over-year, while smart wearables like Apple Watch and certain Fitbit and Garmin products declined 27.2 percent over the same period.
On a higher level the numbers illustrate Apple's competition in the wearable category as a whole. Smartwatch devices are in a battle for valuable wrist space -- users rarely wear a smartwatch on one wrist and a fitness tracker on the other.
Apple is expected to announce a refreshed Apple Watch with GPS capabilities, better waterproofing and a larger battery at a special event tomorrow.
For the second quarter of 2016, Apple Watch saw shipments shrink to an estimated 1.6 million units, down 56.7 percent year over year. By contrast, wearables market leader Fitbit shipped 5.7 million units over the same period, up 28.7 percent.
As a result of the dip in shipments, Apple saw its position among top-five wearable device vendors slip from second to third, with its share of the market dropped precipitously from 20.3 percent in 2015 to only 7 percent in 2016. The dip allowed last year's third-place vendor Xiaomi to usurp Apple with a 14 percent share of the market.
Garmin exhibited the highest growth rate and matched Apple's 1.6 million shipments for the second quarter, up 106.7 percent from the same time last year. Newcomer Lifesense placed fifth on one million units shipped.
The overall wearables market grew 26.1 percent during quarter two.
While IDC's figures tell a tale of doom and gloom for Apple, it should be noted that Apple Watch is a smartwatch, while products marketed by producers like Xiaomi are fitness trackers. IDC acknowledges draws the incongruous comparison, noting basic wearables, or those that do not support third party apps, grew 48.8 percent year-over-year, while smart wearables like Apple Watch and certain Fitbit and Garmin products declined 27.2 percent over the same period.
On a higher level the numbers illustrate Apple's competition in the wearable category as a whole. Smartwatch devices are in a battle for valuable wrist space -- users rarely wear a smartwatch on one wrist and a fitness tracker on the other.
Apple is expected to announce a refreshed Apple Watch with GPS capabilities, better waterproofing and a larger battery at a special event tomorrow.
Comments
I know that this isn't a statically significant number of users but I highly doubt it's a rare occurrence.
I doubt most people outside of these kinds of tech forums know that a new watch is coming.
Its not.
Heres why: it's too complicated.
I own one.
I I really like it
but...
I can can live without it.
I dont bother with with most features very often because it's annoying.
Cant say say that about my iMac 5k or iPhone 6 Plus.
watch OS needs a complete rethink.
Apple will be promoting heavily during the holiday season and others then will know too.
With numerous firmware updates, the Epix has proven fairly reliable, but still, it can be laggy at times with an imprecise feeling touchscreen, and it does crash once in a while, and upon reboot, usually the time is *way* off, requiring a satellite lock to reset. That's a pain. Also, Garmin has seemingly given up fixing the remaining bugs on the unit and it has been at least six months since the last firmware update. Also, according to some Garmin forum members, the company has basically given up on this form factor, preferring to put their development resources into their better selling Fenix 3 line. So...
If an Apple Watch 2 comes along with a GPS, and slightly better battery life than the previous model (hopefully), I will likely take a chance on it. I am sure the iPhone integration, stability and overall user experience will easily trump the Garmin Epix. Also, the Epix does not have a built-in heart-rate monitor, which would indeed be nice to have. So... crossing my fingers on the new Apple Watch. Whether or not it proves as capable as far as track-logging while hiking, and whether or not offline maps will be available to download to it, well... we'll see I suppose. However, if the Apple Watch 2 doesn't deliver, or if the GPS model proves to be overly expensive, then at least I still have my Epix to fall back on. I am curious how many people skipped over the first Apple Watch due to its lack of internal GPS? I may well be a statistical outlier...
At the moment smartwatches, even Apples, don't have enough added benefit to entice most people to buy them.
You know what's also down 50% a year out from release on a regular basis... THE IPHONE.
And down since what?
The first quarter of availability when there was pent up demand and it had been announced for nearly a year?
It sold at least 15M copies so its far from a hobby device, unless your "hobby" is a FORTUNE 500 company.
Not listed, but wouldn't you like to know if smartwatches and pedometers are chipping away at the traditional watch market? Let's remember that we typically only have 2 wrists, and usually only wear one device per wrist.
Personally, I find the wrist to be one of the few ideal places on the body where you can have easy access for input and output without getting in the way or other activities, which means I'd like the size of the display and functionality to grow tremendously in the coming years. For example, I'd like to see how a 16:9 display works on a wrist; but that's not going to happen until culture changes to want more functionally, not unlike how the 3.5" iPhone was excessively large and it's considered laughably tiny.
That said, it would also be nice to have proper smartphones compared to each other. This repot is kind of like saying the original iPhone is shit because some Nokia and Moto dumb phones are far outselling it.
"According to a frac AI survey, IDC has suffered a precipitous fall in the 'credibility' catagory of market trend reporting and a shocking rise in it's irrelevancy index rating"